Visual application modeling - The BPMN2 Visual Editor is a graphical process modeling tool. It is including support for Choreography modeling (as well as Process Orchestration Modeling). A process model such as a choreography model can provide an architectural model of a business process / application, and then be used to generate services from the model. The Savara project currently can generate BPEL process services, and there has been discussions on generating SwitchYard services as well.

I agree that BPMN2 can be used to model process flow and choreography. The application model I was referring to above was actually the visualization of our SCA descriptor. That said, there's no reason why this tooling can't evolve to form a smooth flow from a BPMN 2 choreography model at design-time to a SCA application descriptor and finally to actual implementation of services and configuration of bindings within that descriptor.

Yes, I think from the choreography we should be able to create the SCA app descriptor and either BPEL or BPMN2 process model that accompanies it. Then from the SCA editor, as you've previously mentioned, it will be good to navigate from the implementation component to the relevant BPEL or BPMN2 editor to flesh out the implementation details.

These are all great ideas. At some point, I think we need to decide on a general approach for supporting top-down development workflows. In this thread we have:

SwitchYard/SCA

BPEL

BPMN

Savara/Choreographies

At a minimum, we should decide on the order in which we will add support for each (i.e. pick one to focus on). For 0.5, we will be focusing on the SCA editor, which will allow navigation to supporting resources (interface definitions and implementations). That said, I like the idea of having some sort of higher level tooling, with the SCA editor becoming more about configuration (i.e. runtime details; e.g. gateways, transformations, etc.) and less about application/functional details (i.e. business/workflow logic).

If we focus on bringing the SCA editor together for 0.5, then Jeff and Gary can provide guidance on how that can be bridged to the Savara tooling. In fact, if our plan to get a mid-release tryout in place come together, then they will be able to give feedback before the finished product is released within 0.5. My guess is that putting the whole story together will have to wait until 0.6, but you never know. A functional SCA editor is definitely the highest priority for 0.5.

The "Project Explorer" extension provides a simple view of the services, references and components that comprise the SwitchYard application. Property support is included as well as popup menus for any existing SY actions (e.g. New Bean Component). The open action has been overridden for the SY elements in the explorer to open the related artifact (e.g. Java file for a bean component or service/reference interface, BPMN file for a BPM component, switchyard.xml file for the "SwitchYard" node, WSDL file for service/reference interface, etc.).

Hopefully, we'll have a prototype SCA editor available in the next week or two.

Have you noticed that the last two Tools CI builds have failed? The maven build is actually successful, but the job is failing because junit test results cannot be published. Was there a change in this area?

As part of supporting the last two items in the list, we've added support in the tooling for generating WSDL from Java files. This functionality can be found in the new menu under SwitchYard (Create WSDL file from Java). You'll get the most mileage by invoking it from a right-click on component service or component reference in the Project Explorer.